


Took A While But I Don't Mind

by atomicpixiedust



Category: Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Post-Canon, Self-Reflection, mornings are for coffee and contemplation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:29:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28144632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atomicpixiedust/pseuds/atomicpixiedust
Summary: In which one Harleen Quinzell realizes she isn't alone anymore.
Relationships: Harleen Quinzel & Dinah Lance
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Took A While But I Don't Mind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Calacious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calacious/gifts).



Dreams like this weren’t unfamiliar territory for Harley. Often, especially in those first months post-breakup, Harley would dream of his hands on her. Sometimes they held her like this, more soft than he’d ever been in waking.

More often it turned.

Suddenly, his hands were clutching at her hard, threatening to crush her throat. Harley could hear herself sputtering and choking, pleading with him to stop. Please, pudding. Please don’t do this.

He pushed.

She heard the crashing of glass, and watched as his silhouette rushed from view. She was falling—

Harley woke with the cold feeling of dread holding her like a vice. It took a few minutes of laying there and shaking off the sleep to convince her heart to stop hammering at the speed of light in her chest. She was safe. He wasn’t here. She was in her apartment. He couldn’t find her. She hadn’t seen him in a year.

When at last she could no longer feel the thrum of her heart reverberating in her lungs, Harley got out of bed and took a few shakey steps out her door.

In the dim twilight that filtered in the kitchen, Dinah Lance leaned against the counter, scrolling through her phone, waiting for a pot of coffee to finish brewing. Without looking up she said, “you’re up early.”

“Couldn’t sleep.” The safety of the apartment assured, Harley took more confident steps into the kitchen, perching herself on the countertop next to the pot.

“Got a call from Montoya. Birds have to get moving on something ASAP.” Dinah moved to the cabinet, selecting two mugs and setting them down. “At least she gave me some time to wake up first.”

“The tin man has a heart after all!” Harley said with a grin.

“Something like that.” Dinah busied herself with pouring coffee, but Harley still caught the small smirk.

For a time, it had been strange to see her standing in the kitchen in the morning. There had been a weird feeling, like neither of them should be there, and then Cassandra would step into the awkward tension, reminding both of them why this was happening in the first place.

Cassandra had nightmares after the fight with Sionus. Bad ones. Completely understandable, as far as Harley was concerned, but Cassandra wouldn’t talk about them and they weren’t going away. After weeks of watching her get worse and worse, Harley reached out to the only person she could think of who might be able to get through to Cassandra, and also wouldn’t try to get Harley arrested.

Dinah had begrudgingly agreed at first, but soon she was passing through any time Cassandra wanted to talk and crashing for the night when it was convenient. Evidently, it had worked, and Cassandra started doing better.

Harley couldn’t say when exactly Dinah stopped just “passing through” or “crashing for the night” at their apartment. Somewhere between giving her the spare key and her leaving an extra set of clothes in Harley’s closet “just in case” she had become a permanent resident of Harley and Cassandra’s expensive but modest Gotham apartment.

“Harley? You good?” Dinah held both mugs, one outstretched to her.

Harley shook her head and accepted the offered cup. “Mhmm. Just not awake yet, I guess.”

Dinah didn’t look like she believed her, but didn’t press the issue. As she sipped her coffee, she wandered into the living room, looking down on the barely awake city beneath them through the large windows. Harley watched her as she scanned movement in the distance.

They had never talked about that initial awkwardness, so maybe Dinah had always felt perfectly comfortable here. Maybe it was only Harley who felt so awkward and out of place with all the extra people in the apartment.

Isolation does weird things to people, after all.

In those first few months after the breakup, she had to learn how to be alone again. She’d hated it. Bruce’s presence did enough to make her small, empty apartment feel less depressingly devoid of life, but it wasn’t the same. 

The crushing loneliness was as terrible as it was shocking. She didn’t realize how much being ‘The Joker’s Girl’ had meant to her. For how horrendous their relationship had been, she had someone. That was more than a lot of people could say. More than she could have said for most of her life.

Contrary to popular belief, Harley wasn’t stupid. She had known that what she had with The Joker was toxic and broken. She’d picked herself off the floor and covered enough bruises to know that wasn’t what love was supposed to look like. 

The narrative of other women in her position was familiar to her. These women feared for their safety. They worried they would never recover financially, emotionally, or physically if they didn’t stay.

She knew that narrative and so she had convinced herself that wasn’t what she was doing. Her attachment might make her fearful, but she wouldn’t leave him because she could fix this. She would save him, even if it killed her. 

The realization that she had let him become her whole world was shocking. How could she have let this happen? Wasn’t she supposed to be smarter than this?

Amidst the months of crushing solitary, she decided she was better off being alone. Letting people in was too much of a gamble. No one would hurt her again and she couldn’t be hurt if she was alone.

And then Cassandra had come along.

The door at the far end of the hallway opened, and Harley shook herself out of her thoughts long enough to pull out a bowl, fill it with cereal and milk.

“Hey, kid,” Dinah said as Cassandra and Bruce padded into the kitchen. Cassandra slumped into a stool at the kitchen island, Bruce settling under her feet. “How’d you sleep?”

“Mmph,” Cassandra said, actually still half asleep.

“You’re getting on top of the homework today right?”

Cassandra groaned, pressing her cheek down on the counter, “Do I have to?”

“Yes you have to.” Harley said, pushing the bowl in front of her eyes, “It’s important.”

Cassandra took the offering, lifting the spoon to her mouth as she mumbled, “Fine.”

For a few moments, the only sound was the soft scraping of utensils on plates as they ate their respective breakfasts.

It was in these quiet moments, where she was most in awe of the change. Silence before had been foreboding, like the calm before a storm or the countdown tick before an explosion. It was only a matter of time before things would crumble in on themselves, and the fighting would begin.

That had never happened here, though Harley sometimes found herself waiting for it. When Dinah exclaimed frustration over not finding something, or when Cassandra got mad over something innocuous, Harley felt the same tangled knot of fear squeeze at her stomach and heart, waiting for the explosion of retaliation. 

That moment never came, and Harley was left with an odd mix of numbness and relief, like the realization had settled on her skin, but hadn’t quite sunk in just yet.

Dinah’s phone buzzed on the counter. She retrieved it and slid it into her pocket, “I’d better get going before Montoya blows a gasket.”

Without another word, she disappeared into Harley’s bedroom. Cassandra also slid off her stool, going back to her room and shutting the door with a soft thud.

Sometimes Harley found she was still waiting for the day that Cassandra would wake up and realize she didn’t want her anymore. She was waiting for the day that the drawer she shared with Dinah would at last be emptied, and for the day when Bruce, past his prime, would lay down and die. For the day when everything she had come to know would crumple apart the way it always seemed to and she would be left there again, with nothing but the broken pieces of herself and not enough energy to tape them all back together.

And yet, they were still here.

She realized at first that she wasn’t learning to trust other people again, she was learning to trust herself. There were people in her life that she could depend on again and that trust scared her sometimes. She tried telling herself that she wasn’t going to get hurt, but couldn’t believe herself.

Wasn’t she the same Harley Quinn who believed all those horrible things he had said? The same one that had crawled back to him every time he offered half baked apologies and not tender enough caresses?

It took longer than she wanted to admit for her to realize that, yes, she was that Harley, but she was also the one who left. She was the one who drew the final line in the sand and sent the message loud and clear that she was done being pushed around.

That hadn’t just come from nowhere.

Harley was shaken out of her thoughts by the feeling of a hand placed gently on her shoulder. Dinah was beside her, now in full uniform, “you’re sure you’re good?”

“Oh you know, just thinking about stuff.” Harley said.

Dinah smiled, her hand lingering for a moment more before she dropped it. “I’m here if you want to talk, you know.”

“Yeah,” Harley smiled back, “I know.”

“Bye, Cassandra.” Dinah called as she headed towards the door.

“Bye!” The muffled call came from Cassandra’s room.

The door lock clicked behind her as Dinah left, leaving Harley alone in the kitchen again.

Harley wasn’t sure that she was ready to acknowledge the butterflies in her stomach when Dinah was around, or if she ever would be, but maybe this was enough. Maybe she could just hold onto this tiny family she had carved out for herself. That could be enough, she thought. At least she’d like that a lot.

**Author's Note:**

> hey there and happy holidays!!  
> hope you liked it!
> 
> title is from HowDoILook by Pillow Queens


End file.
